In Queen of the Darkest Hour, I have a newly baptized Christian swearing an oath on saints’ relics. A lot of saints’ relics. It is possible, if the holy objects are tiny enough for a portable reliquary.

Medieval portable reliquaries were the size and shape of a purse. It is possible a pilgrim could visit multiple sites, collect miniscule, ordinary looking objects, and house them inside the portable reliquary before it was gilded with metal and decorated.

Portable reliquaries allowed pilgrims to be in the presence of a saint even when they had returned home. They were also handy in politics, when someone promised to be a vassal to his lord.

In Queen, this new Christian was an important person—it would be a spoiler for me to identify him—and he was provided with two reliquaries for his vow to King Charles, my heroine’s husband: “By the bone fragments of the holy martyrs Ewald the Fair and Ewald the Black, the hairs of the holy martyr Ursula, the oil of the lamps burning above the tomb of the holy martyr Boniface, the stone chip from the tomb of Saint Lioba, the dust from Saint Willibald’s and Saint Walburga’s graves, and a splinter from the True Cross, I make this oath and will keep it all my days, so help me God, creator of the heavens and earth.”

Comparing and contrasting the epitaphs for Hildegard and Fastrada, Charlemagne’s third and fourth wives, can lead some misreading between the lines.

When they died—Hildegard in 783 and Fastrada in 794—Charles treated them the same. He had them interred with honors within a church, the most desirable of hallowed ground. He donated land to the Church and paid for Masses on behalf of their souls, and he commissioned epitaphs. Paul the Deacon is loquacious in his praise for Hildegard. What Theodulf wrote for Fastrada is shorter:

“Here lie the glorious remains of Queen Fastrada, whom cold death snatched away in the bloom of life. Noble by birth, she was united in marriage to her mighty husband, and nobler still, she is now united to the King of Heaven. The better part of her soul, King Charles himself, she left behind, to whom a merciful God may grant long life.”

Theodulf was famous for a lengthy poem lauding the royal family, so scholars have speculated on whether the epitaph’s brevity means something.

Was Fastrada so awful that Theodulf had a hard time finding something nice to say about her and was being tactful? If Theodulf had also written Hildegard’s epitaph, I would give credence to that.

Instead, I’ll provide a little speculation of my own. It is possible Paul’s grief drove him to write verse upon verse while Theodulf’s impaired him. Having supervised an obit desk, I can attest that grief affects everyone differently. Theodulf’s later poem praising Charles’s family was crafted under different circumstances. We don’t know how long it took the poet to compose or how many revisions he made.

Theodulf’s attitude toward women comes into play as well. He did write “A Woman’s Wiles,” urging men not to be manipulated by their wives. But when he refers to the king as “the better part of her soul,” he likely is referring to Fastrada and Charles’s close relationship—the original meaning of “better half.”

Perhaps, we are complicating something simple. Theodulf might have been acknowledging the grief of a bereaved husband while trying to comfort him. He says Fastrada is “united with the King of Heaven” yet left her husband all too soon.

When Fastrada married Charlemagne in 783, she was joining a court full of intellectuals, most of whom were foreigners. For the sake of storytelling, I couldn’t include all those scholars in my latest novel, Queen of the Darkest Hour, but Alcuin of York appears as a secondary character. He is the master of the Palace School, teaching King Charles and his family.

Ever since I started researching 8th century Francia and Saxony, Alcuin has fascinated me. Although he lived more than 1,200 years ago, some of his ideas are relevant today. Below are a couple of gems I’ve come across.

In a letter to Meginfrid the chamberlain (although the real audience is King Charles), Alcuin outlined how the process of converting pagans to Christianity should work: teach first, then baptize, then expound on the Gospel. “And if any one of these three is lacking, the listener’s soul cannot enjoy salvation. Moreover, faith, as St. Augustine says, is a matter of will, not of compulsion. A person can be drawn to faith but cannot forced to it.”

Regarding the arts, he said, “My master Ecgberht used to tell me that the arts were discovered by the wisest of men, and it would be a deep and lasting shame if we allowed them to perish for want of zeal. But many are so faint-hearted as not care about knowing the reason for such things.”

In Charlemagne’s day (748-814), astronomy was a blend of natural philosophy and religion, a study of the creation—and the creator.

Medieval people saw God’s hand in everything, from providing a good harvest to feed them through winter to healing the sick to deciding the victor of the war. So they would do what they could to gain God’s favor. Three days of litanies were part of the military strategy. In the medieval mind, searching the night sky for clues to God’s will made sense.

The universe had to be orderly, and Carolingians relied on Roman books to explain it: Pliny’s Natural History, Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and Calcidius’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Early medieval intellectuals placed Earth at the center of the universe and the sun, moon, and seven planets revolving around it in eccentric patterns—that is, circles within each other but not sharing the same center—and at different angles to the Earth’s plane. Planets, the keepers of God’s time, could also move in epicycles, loops along a circle.

King Charles himself took a keen interest in astronomy and corresponded with scholars about phenomena such as eclipses and the size of the moon. His biographer Einhard elaborates, “He learned how to calculate and with great diligence and curiosity investigated the course of the stars.” Charles passed on his interest in astronomy, along with the six other liberal arts, to his children, both sons and daughters. In a poem, the scholar Alcuin mentions a daughter gazing at the night sky and praising God, who created it.

The pursuit of knowledge fit into Charles’s imperial ambitions. In 780, he recruited foreign intellectuals, and in the decade that followed, workers were converting the royal villa at Aachen to a palace, one of many construction projects Charles would undertake.

Astronomical events were important enough to record in the annals. The year 810 saw two eclipses of the sun and the moon, and 812 had a midday eclipse of the sun. To Einhard, those eclipses, spots on the sun lasting seven days, and a ball of brilliant fire that fell from the sky during a war were among the signs that Charles was near the end of his life.

Einhard says Charles ignored the omens. Perhaps the emperor decided not to make a big deal of them publicly. But a year after that last eclipse, the 65-year-old monarch in declining health appeared to be putting his affairs in order. He invited his son Louis, the king of Aquitaine, to the assembly in Aachen, placed a crown on Louis’s head, and named him co-emperor. Charles also ordered that his grandson Bernard be called king of Italy, succeeding Louis’s late brother.

A few months after the assembly, a high fever and pleurisy sent Charles to his bed. He died a week later on January 28, 814. The annals say nothing about the sky that night.

Sources

Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, translated by Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

P.D. King’s Charlemagne: Translated Sources

Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, by Pierre Riché, translated by Jo Ann McNamara

During my research for Queen of the Darkest Hour, I encountered Osulf, a pupil of the scholar Alcuin and part of Prince Karl’s retinue. (Karl, also called Charles the Younger, stood to inherit the bulk of Charlemagne’s empire but preceded his father in death.)

The poet and courtier Theodulf alludes to Karl and Osulf in a parody of Virgil’s Second Eclogue, about the shepherd Corydon and his love for the boy Alexis. What is a novelist to do?

My answer: whatever works for the story. The parody is one poem by someone who saw Alcuin as a rival and likely saw a vulnerability in Osulf. Not many people know about the poem, and it doesn’t prove anything. For my tale, I needed Karl to be interested in women. So here is how I handled the matter, as my heroine, Queen Fastrada, worries about her stepsons’ intentions with the daughter of count:

Karl was a different story. Courtiers had complained he was too close to a British Saxon man in his retinue, one of Alcuin’s pupils, and she had felt relieved when his guards told her they had seen him with a harlot from time to time. “He hasn’t threatened a noblewoman’s chastity,” she said. “How was he with Richilde during the hunt?”

If another novelist were to portray Karl and Osulf as lovers, I wouldn’t argue with the choice. This type of work is called fiction for a reason, and it allows plenty of room for speculation.

In 780, Frankish King Charles might have been thinking about his realm’s long-term future and wanted to give his empire an intellectual foundation, one to associate Francia with ancient Rome and rival the Byzantines.

At that time, the man we today call Charlemagne had ruled for 12 years and had conquered Aquitaine and Lombardy. Although he was still warring with Saxon tribes, he had gained significant territory. The father of six (with No. 7 on the way) was 32, no longer a young man by medieval standards.

He and his queen, Hildegard, who was from a long-established, powerful family, started a journey to Rome, perhaps with empire-building on their minds, judging by what happened in Rome the following spring.

But first the royal family needed to spend the winter in Pavia. There, Charles might have met Paul the Deacon, a Lombard who wrote Historia Romana and other works and had taught in the overthrown court of Pavia, and Peter of Pisa, a deacon and poet who would later teach the king Latin grammar.

When the Frankish royals resumed their journey in warmer weather, Charles met Alcuin in Parma. Alcuin, a Saxon from Britain, already earned a reputation as master of the cathedral school at York, and Charles invited him to lead the Palace School in Francia. Alcuin agreed, after he got permission from his superior upon his return to York.

In Rome, the pope anointed Charles and Hildegard’s three- and four-year-old sons as subkings, and their six-year-old daughter was betrothed to the child emperor of Byzantium. The Frankish king and the pope apparently discussed Charles’s uneasy relations with his cousin the duke of Bavaria, resulting in high-level diplomatic talks later.

After Easter, Charles and Hildegard returned to Francia in the company of intelligent men: Peter of Pisa; Paul the Deacon; Paulinus of Aquileia, who would later write about theology and play a role in converting the conquered Avars in the 790s, and Fardulf, a poet who in the 790s exposed a plot to overthrow Charles and was rewarded with the abbey of Saint-Denis.

Charles’s intellectuals would come and go in fulfilling their other roles, and his circle of scholars would expand to include other nationalities such as Theodulf, a Visigoth from Hispania and leading satirist, poet, author, and bishop of Orléans, and Dungal from Ireland. The circle had a few Franks such as Angilbert, Charles’s trusted aide, diplomat, poet, lay abbot of Saint-Riquier who would transform the place into a center for learning, and later almost-husband (technically a Friedelmann) of Charles’s daughter Bertha.

These thinkers and writers were sometimes rivals who were not above teasing and sniping at each other in their poetry. But thanks to them and others, Francia produced more literary work than before.

Charles’s own education level in the 780s is unclear, but it was higher than most of his illiterate countrymen’s. Likely, his mother taught him his first lessons, and she hired a churchman to tutor him as he got older. By the end of his life, he could read but not write. He could converse in Latin in addition to his native Frankish and understood Greek better than he could speak it. He enjoyed the liberal arts ranging from literature to math to music and astronomy, studied philosophy, and had his sons and his daughters educated.

He never stopped learning, and in old age, he tried his hand at writing. He didn’t need that skill. He had clerks for that as did the rest of the nobility. But this hunger for knowledge might been another reason he recruited intellectuals.

Originally published on Unusual Historicals.

Sources

Einhard’s The Life of Charlemagne translated by Evelyn Scherabon Firchow and Edwin H. Zeydel

Carolingian Chronicles, which includes the Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories translated by Bernard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers

Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne by Pierre Riché, translated by Jo Ann McNamara

Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, edited with an introduction by Peter Godman

Queen Hildegard, Charlemagne’s third wife, is portrayed as beautiful, pious, intelligent, and benevolent. But don’t let those virtues mislead you into thinking she was a sweet, little flower. Although young, she knew how to wield influence and had savvy a veteran politician would envy.

I encountered Hildegard during research for my novels, and she has a presence in all of them. In The Cross and the Dragon, she is Alda’s friend. My heroine looks to Hildegard’s marriage as the way husband and wife should treat each other and envies the queen’s fertility while she struggles to conceive. My Saxon peasant family in The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar watch her haggle with a merchant, and Deorlaf, my heroine’s son, entertains the royal family when he is part of a merchant party.

Queen of the Darkest Hour starts shortly after Hildegard’s death. My heroine, Queen Fastrada, compares herself to her predecessor, wondering if she’ll measure up and burdened with the knowledge that a woman she had admired would not approve of the marriage. The thoughts and feelings are my speculation, but Hildegard might have preferred her widower have concubines rather than marry again. Her reason is inherent to noble families: she wouldn’t want her husband to sire a rival to her sons’ inheritance, one she worked to secure.

19th century lithograph (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

As with many early medieval queens, little is written about Hildegard. She was probably 13 or 14 when she wed Charles in 772. Although they were fond of each other, the marriage was foremost a political alliance. She came from the Agilolfing clan, one of the most established and prestigious in the realm, and was a kinswoman of the duke of Bavaria (who also was Charles’s first cousin). Hildegard’s family controlled lands in a part of the kingdom ruled by Charles’s brother, Carloman, who had died in the previous year. Charles took over his brother’s former kingdom, and his marriage to Hildegard made that possible.

No matter that Charles was already married to a Lombard princess. His repudiation of her enraged the Lombard king—and likely Queen Mother Bertrada, who had negotiated Charles’s marriage to the Lombard. Hildegard was joining a household with a (possibly) irritated and (definitely) strong-willed mother-in-law, a husband who had divorced two wives, a 3-year-old son named Pepin from Charles’s first marriage, courtiers like Adalhard who disapproved the repudiation and remarriage, war with the Saxons underway, and another war with the Lombards on the horizon.

She succeeded against all these obstacles. It helped that she conceived quickly and bore her first son, Charles (whom I call Karl in my novels), in late 772 or early 773. The birth of a healthy heir solidified her position as queen. During her 11-year marriage, she would bear nine children, six of whom—three sons and three daughters—survived to adulthood.

She and Charles might have been a like-minded couple. He certainly wanted her around. He would send for her to join him, even when he was at war in Lombardy, and she often traveled with him. Might they have shared aspirations for an empire? Did she play a role in bringing foreign scholars to his court? Maybe.

In 781, we see Hildegard’s power. In Rome, she witnessed her middle son, 4-year-old Carloman, be baptized and renamed Pepin, even though Charles had a child by that name. The younger Pepin (whom I call Carloman in my first two novels and Little Pippin in Queen of the Darkest Hour) and her youngest son, 3-year-old Louis, were named subkings of Aquitaine and Italy. Her daughter Hruodtrude, was betrothed to another child, the Byzantine emperor (his mom was regent). Like most medieval noblewomen, Hildegard was ambitious for her children, making sure her offspring, and not another woman’s, would succeed her husband.

Hildegard’s life was short. Those multiple pregnancies might have taken a toll on her health. She was in her mid-20s when she died in 783, shortly after the birth of her ninth child. Charles would endure more personal losses that year. The baby, named after her mother, lived only 40 days, a death Paul the Deacon described as “stabbing your father’s heart with a dagger.” On top of that, Bertrada passed away.

No doubt Charles was heartbroken, but he could not take a break from his responsibilities. He was still at war with the Saxons to the east and needed to bolster alliances with that part of the realm, and a few months later, he married Fastrada, an East Frank.

Fastrada and Charles were fond of each other, even though she was controversial (the reason I wrote Queen.) Yet Charles maintained his alliance with his late wife’s family. Hildegard’s brother, Gerold, played an important role when Charles ousted the Bavarian duke and warred with the Avars. Hildegard’s influence lived on.

Like this:

In Life of Alfred, Bishop Asser was supposedly trying to explain why kings of Wessex didn’t bestow their wives with the status of queen. Then he went on to recount a queen who lived decades earlier: Eadburh, who conveniently came from a family that had competed with Alfred’s grandfather for power.

Objective reporting of known facts is a relatively modern concept. Using the pen to trash your (or your master’s) rival isn’t, and medieval readers would have known that Asser had a definite point of view.

One question constantly causes me to pause writing my novel set in eighth century Francia and do research: how long does it take to get from Point A to Point B?

The answer: it depends. Are the characters traveling by foot, horse, or ox cart? Are any of them sick or pregnant? At which cities or abbeys will they stop to rest their animals for three days? Does anyone break a wheel? If the characters are in a hurry (a rarity in the Middle Ages), are they changing horses? Can they afford to? And do they know how to get to their destination?

A journey in the Dark Ages was more miserable than the middle seat in coach. Travelers had no weather forecast, and they risked being waylaid by bandits. As they traversed wilderness, the folk would have been terrified of otherworldly creatures, especially at night. The food was awful, often a type of hard bread edible only when softened with water to the texture of leather.

On top of all that, progress was slow. Charlemagne’s armies typically went only 12 to 15 miles per day. The animals they used for transport would need to rest and eat around midday. Think of it as the equivalent of filling up the gas tank.

9th century Psalter (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

To calculate travel times in my novels, I use maps in my reference books and Google maps. Sometimes, I will redraw Google’s route so that it more closely resembles the roads and the cities that existed at the time. (Yes, Google, I know your way is faster, but I’m not interested in that right now.)

If the distance is great, the trek really is a combination of several trips, with three days at a civilized place to rest horse, mule, or ox. So a list for journey from Nevers to Le Mans—which my characters undertake in The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar—reads Nevers to Bourges, three to five days; three days of rest; Bourges to Orleans, about five days; three days of rest. You get the idea.

Today, a drive between those two French cities might take less than four hours. In the Dark Ages, people could be on the road for almost a month. And that reality can lead to conversations like this from Ashes, where my heroine’s son is trying to get to Le Mans to rescue his family from slavery, but he is way off course at Saint Riquier Abbey:

“Where is Le Mans?” Deorlaf grumbled. “The guard at Orleans said to go to Paris. The guard at Paris said to go to Orleans, but we had just been to Orleans, so that could not be right. The priest at Reims said go to Laon. And no one here knows anything.”

“Perhaps we have not reached it yet,” Ives said.

“But my sister said it would take a month to reach Le Mans from Nevers. It’s been well over a month.”

Originally published Aug. 2, 2015, on S.K. Keogh’s The Jack Mallory Chronicles.

Likely middle-aged, the widowed 9th century Mercian Queen Ælfflæd attracted a suitor, but there was one problem. Her son Wigstan, who gave up the throne for a religious life, forbid the marriage because of consanguinity—that she and the wannabe bridegroom were too closely related. Or Wigstan persuaded his mom to refuse the offer for that reason. Wigstan paid a high price as a result.

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About Me

I write fiction set in early medieval times, an intersection of faith, family, and power. My latest release is Queen of the Darkest Hour, in which Fastrada must stop a conspiracy before it shatters the realm. For more about me and my fiction, visit kimrendfeld.com or contact me at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Queen of the Darkest Hour

Short Story: Betrothed to the Red Dragon

The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar

The Cross and Dragon

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